Review: Gravity Falls “The Love God”

Spoilers Below

The mysteries of Gravity Falls will have to wait a little bit longer to be solved. Robbie is heartbroken over his break up with Wendy and Mabel must fix it! She is the greatest matchmaker ever, right?

Mabel and Dipper are watching clouds with Wendy and her friends. As they pick out various shapes, Mabel notices a hot air balloon. It is time for the Woodstick Festival! A bunch of young hippies descend on the town to listen to bands and hang out. Shortly after the gang decides to attend, they hear a weird moaning sound. Robbie is sitting in an empty grave, moaning about how much he misses Wendy. Mabel decides she must hook him up with someone in order to make everyone happy.

“Girl Dipper” goes through every female in Gravity Falls, including a few who aren’t even human. She settles on setting Robbie up with Tambry, one of Wendy’s friends. However, neither Robbie nor Tambry are into each other. The Love God, one of the music acts playing at the festival, bursts into the diner as Mabel tries to figure out how to make the teens fall in love. It turns out that The Love God is really a cherub with magical love dust that can make anyone or anything fall in love. Mabel steals a bottle of the dust and pours it on Robbie’s chili fries. BAM! Teenage love.

Unfortunately, this causes chaos when the rest of the friend group finds out about the new couple. Wendy’s friend, Nate, is upset because he likes Tambry. Lee is upset because Nate didn’t tell him that he liked Tambry. Wendy is upset because Tambry is dating her ex. And Thompson is upset because Mabel has broken up the friend group. Now everyone is unhappy.

Over at the Mystery Shack, Soos has convinced Stan to keep the Shack open for the festival. The hippie teens scare Stan so he usually closes the Shack while they are around. However, Soos thinks they could cash in on the new customers. Stan runs with this idea by making a hot air balloon, shaped like his face, to fly during the concert.

Mabel has resigned herself to the fact that maybe Robbie and Tambry shouldn’t be a couple. She gets Dipper to help her steal a bottle of The Love God’s anti-love potion in order to reverse the previous love potion. The Love God chases the kids around the festival, trying to get his potion back. At the same time, Stan’s hot air balloon has an epic fail. A few letters fall off his sign, which originally said I Heart Kids, so it now reads I Eat Kids and the face catches on fire. So a fiery face under a sign saying I Eat Kids is now falling onto the festival, scaring the living crap out of everyone. It “eats” The Love God, just in time to save Mabel and Dipper.

The twins get ready to shoot Robbie and Tambry with the anti-love potion but Mabel sees how happy they are together and can’t bring herself to do it. She hopes that things will work out in the end. Just then, security finds out that Thompson has snacks from outside of the festival duct taped to his body. They chase him up a telephone pole, where the hit him with sticks, not unlike a pinata. The friends cheer on Thompson as he tries to avoid getting caught. Of course, this brings them all back together again. Everyone has returned to their happy state.

I liked this episode, even though it didn’t advance the general plot of the show. It was cool to have an episode almost completely devoted to the dynamics of Wendy’s friends. We frequently see them in the background but barely know who they actually are. It is a little weird that they are so accepting of Dipper but there aren’t a lot of other characters in the show for Dipper to fit in with. Even Dipper needs friends. I wonder if the friends will show up more now that Dipper is hanging out with them or if they will fade back into the background, only to show up in special episodes. Maybe the whole gang could work on the secrets of the journal and Gravity Falls. Like a strange Scooby Doo!